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Why have there never been any EEG testing on people WHILE they're on psychedelics?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aphyd
  • Start date Start date
I agree, fMRI would be a very useful study. Somebody should do a study with fMRI on how all the various different psychedelic substances 'light up' different areas of the brain, and compare the subjective experiential data. This way, we can start to map out how different parts of the brain and different receptors are linked to different experiential factors. We can start to probe and dissolve the boundaries between physicality and spiritual experiences in observable science.

This would be even better if we could combine technologies such as fMRI and EEG. The more we can correlate what is going on in the brain whilst we are undergoing various psychedelic experiences it's possible we can learn so much and begin to answer many unanswered questions.
 
i dont think the main problem is because the drugs are illegal. legality is but one problem. ethics is another. given the wide variability in effects, and the stringency of the ethics involved in controlled experiments, it would be very hard to get approval of such things without proper motivation.
lets not forget there is research being done in the use of psychedelics for treating depression (thats the one that comes to mind first), psylocin iirc, and that is also illegal.
scientist can get away with a lot of things for the right reasons (and the right backing).
 
To the people saying that it would be scary to have an EEG done while on psychedelics I have to disagree. While I have not done an EEG while tripping, I have had an EEG done, an fMRI, and a CT scan done on my brain and none of them struck me as being potentially scary. I could see the fMRI being scary if you are claustrophobic, but it made a lot of really awesome noises, kind of sounded like a piece of experimental drone music from the 60s. Lots of potential for deep listening. The EEG I actually thought could be pretty sweet on a psychedelic as they have you close your eyes and use a strobe light right in front of your eyes which they vary the speed of for each reading. Different speeds produced different colour fields on the back of my eyelids. Huxley actually talks about the phenomenon in Heaven and Hell and I think he suggests that doing that to someone on a psychedelic could be used to produce scenes in their mind's eye.

Now this isn't an argument as to what benefit could come from these sorts of tests. I'm just saying that it's probably not as scary as it might seem. Then again, if you were sufficiently toasted, I could see being hooked up to any of these machine as a quick freakout.
 
kingme said:
lets not forget there is research being done in the use of psychedelics for treating depression (thats the one that comes to mind first), psylocin iirc, and that is also illegal.
scientist can get away with a lot of things for the right reasons (and the right backing).
Click to expand...

True, but how many studies have been done on psilocybin over the last 40 years? You could probably count them on one hand.

Being illegal brings a host of other problems with it - it massively influences the type of research you do. Scientists understand that if they come up with research saying "Illegal drugs are great, the governments got it wrong.." government funding is going to dry up. So, even if you do get the rare funding for an illegal drug it's a good bet you'll concentrate on something that proves it causes "brain-damage".

It's a self-enforcing thing. It takes a very, very brave scientist together with independent funding and a very brave boss, to do positive research into illegal drugs.
 
Ismene said:
True, but how many studies have been done on psilocybin over the last 40 years? You could probably count them on one hand.
Click to expand...

Actually, MAPS alone lists 7 completed studies on psilocybin, and that's only counting back to 1995, and doesn't count the other 7 they list as being 'under progress': http://www.maps.org/research/

MAPS themselves also have 2 current studies featuring psilocybin. One is in combination with LSD, but this one appears to be psilocybin-only: http://www.maps.org/research/cluster/psilo-lsd/pca1protocol.pdf
 
Jauntypeacenik said:
To the people saying that it would be scary to have an EEG done while on psychedelics I have to disagree. While I have not done an EEG while tripping, I have had an EEG done, an fMRI, and a CT scan done on my brain and none of them struck me as being potentially scary. I could see the fMRI being scary if you are claustrophobic, but it made a lot of really awesome noises, kind of sounded like a piece of experimental drone music from the 60s. Lots of potential for deep listening. The EEG I actually thought could be pretty sweet on a psychedelic as they have you close your eyes and use a strobe light right in front of your eyes which they vary the speed of for each reading. Different speeds produced different colour fields on the back of my eyelids. Huxley actually talks about the phenomenon in Heaven and Hell and I think he suggests that doing that to someone on a psychedelic could be used to produce scenes in their mind's eye.

Now this isn't an argument as to what benefit could come from these sorts of tests. I'm just saying that it's probably not as scary as it might seem. Then again, if you were sufficiently toasted, I could see being hooked up to any of these machine as a quick freakout.
Click to expand...

not being scary is one thing. but it is another to say they dont influence the state of mind. all who have tried psychdelics know that one is quite easily influenced emotionally and otherwise while under the effects, so the sounds of the machines, the limitations implied and all that, even the states of meditation one might bring about will all be factors polluting the end results. so to hope to get any conclusions, one would have to perform many tests in many conditions to avoid such personal and singular effects.

still, i hope we will get tehre some day. i mean, they have done an fmri to a woman having an orgasm and that must be pretty damn difficult....
 
kingme said:
not being scary is one thing. but it is another to say they dont influence the state of mind. all who have tried psychdelics know that one is quite easily influenced emotionally and otherwise while under the effects, so the sounds of the machines, the limitations implied and all that, even the states of meditation one might bring about will all be factors polluting the end results. so to hope to get any conclusions, one would have to perform many tests in many conditions to avoid such personal and singular effects.

still, i hope we will get tehre some day. i mean, they have done an fmri to a woman having an orgasm and that must be pretty damn difficult....
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's very true. I guess the question is really what someone would hope to get out of doing these readings. I mean, I loved the experience of being in an fMRI machine so if I went in one on acid and had a grand old time then the readings would show my brain happy on acid, listening deeply to the soundscape of the machine. What would come of such a reading? Well, it would give a comparison between my mind listening and enjoying the fMRI sober vs. on acid. I suppose looking for differences in the readings could yield areas of the brain worth looking into in a deeper way in order to understand how psychedelics work. However, by your wording I get the impression that you feel the most useful application for this kind of testing would be to see what a neutral mind looks like on psychedelics, one unaffected by surrounding stimuli, perhaps? I'm not sure how much sense that makes or how useful it would be. I mean, what is a "pure" or "unpolluted" psychedelic state of mind? It doesn't seem like there could be one. Why else would set and setting be so massively important to the outcome of a trip?

I can see though how the specific conditions which arise when one is being tested on these machines are not conditions one is likely to have tripped in before. In that sense the state of mind isn't so much polluted as it is not representative of the tripper's usual tripping mind. In other words, you'd get a reading of a tripping mind confronted with getting a reading, or more generally, confronted with unfamiliar and possibly anxiogenic stimuli. If the goal of a study were to see what's happening in the brain during a more or less normal trip (as normal as a trip can be, I guess), I don't know if that's possible until these types of readings can be done with an entirely unobtrusive piece of equipment. Right now, it seems like we can only compare brain activity between a single subject, sober and tripping, while the subject is engaged in a specific activity requiring little to no motion. With a good pair of noise cancelling headphones and eye-shades a comparison could be made between someone listening to music sober and tripping, using an fMRI, for example.
 
um not everyone! lol me on 2C-E, and put a tv with an awsome mario-cart classic game and i'd sit there just fine! lol :D :D or if it could just use the electrodes wireless-ly, and give me a little room so i dont feel enclosed i'd so be game for it :D
 
Black Octagon MK 2 said:
Actually, MAPS alone lists 7 completed studies on psilocybin, and that's only counting back to 1995, and doesn't count the other 7 they list as being 'under progress': http://www.maps.org/research/
Click to expand...

I'm not sure 7 studies in 16 years funded by one body is the volume of research that's going to change anything tho. I could probably fund 7 studies in 16 years with the money I find down the back of my sofa.

I think massive quantities of research is the only way forward.
 
Ismene said:
I'm not sure 7 studies in 16 years funded by one body is the volume of research that's going to change anything tho.
Click to expand...

Neither do I, but I wanted to show that things are definitely picking up, little by little. I'm not saying we'll get there anytime soon, but I do think that a breakthrough towards 'massive quantities of research' is feasibly possible in our lifetimes. Specifically I'm thinking of a scenario in which a group like MAPS finally gets proper governmental support to do what it's doing with proper funding and resources.

And don't forget...we're only talking about psilocybin. MAPS and co. have various other initiatives completed and ongoing on other psychedelics.

Baby steps...Baby steps...baby steps...and then suddenly the baby is running around like a psycho (that's my vision for the future of all this :)
 
Ismene said:
Being illegal brings a host of other problems with it - it massively influences the type of research you do. Scientists understand that if they come up with research saying "Illegal drugs are great, the governments got it wrong.." government funding is going to dry up. So, even if you do get the rare funding for an illegal drug it's a good bet you'll concentrate on something that proves it causes "brain-damage".

It's a self-enforcing thing. It takes a very, very brave scientist together with independent funding and a very brave boss, to do positive research into illegal drugs.
Click to expand...

yes there is a man called David Nutt in the UK, he was on the official government board and he spoke *against* the way the drug policy is. he was sacked by this guy called Alan Johnson........ and this was relatively recently, in the past few years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked

interview with him by Howard Marks, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWQaJZkDaB8


i don't think GlaxoSmithKline would find psilocybin particularly profitable.... but it does seem a shame some people don't realise there's more to life then profit in the first place ?
 
silver_cross said:
um not everyone! lol me on 2C-E, and put a tv with an awsome mario-cart classic game and i'd sit there just fine! lol :D :D or if it could just use the electrodes wireless-ly, and give me a little room so i dont feel enclosed i'd so be game for it :D
Click to expand...

reminds me of rainbow road =D
 
huolesoh said:
i don't think GlaxoSmithKline would find psilocybin particularly profitable....
Click to expand...

Me neither. I can just imagine a company pumping millions into research into psilocybin and someone coming up at the end saying "hoorah boss, look at all the uses we've found for it. We're going to make billions!!".

"Er..no we arn't mate, it's fucking illegal isn't it. If we sell it we'll get locked up for 20 years".

"Oh yes...I hadn't thought of that.." :D
 
^ Or better yet, if it were legal, "Lets charge our usual extortionate prices!" suddenly followed by "Wait.. people can grow and pick their own mushrooms and get this stuff for free? :("
 
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